Sunday is National Children's Day -- and what better gift to our local heirs than to assure they have plenty of clean power, undiminished shorelines and fresh air 35 years from now.th consecutive term as mayor.

After all, they might be very busy then trying to figure out how to finally end the Iraqi War, decide if money for a new Hyannis airport terminal is available and whether to re-elect an aging John Klimm to his 18

Speaking of clean power, this column recently favored stalling the proposed wind farm on Horseshoe Shoals and sliding it to the back burner to await signs of new interest on the nuclear side of the wind/nuclear power equation.

Wind turbines and nuclear reactors produce clean power, but there is a wide disparity in the amount each can produce, nuclear reactors achieving the significantly higher and consistent output.

On Aug. 30, this column quoted Clay Sells, U.S. deputy secretary of energy: "Two years ago there was exactly zero plants (nuclear reactors) on the drawing boards. Today 15 companies are talking about building 30 commercial reactors. We think there is a significant chance many of them will be built."

Well, he wasn't whistling Dixie.

Last week, NRG Energy Inc. of Texas was slated to submit the first application in 30 years for a new atomic reactor, according to the Associated Press, and the government still expects at least six more applications this year from other energy producers.

NRG's application for two modern units in South Texas is the first complete construction and operating license sought since before the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

The island in the Susquehanna River in southeast Pennsylvania was the site of a major nuclear accident March 28, 1979. A partial meltdown of fuel rods released radioactive material and caused the evacuation of thousands of nearby residents.

There were no deaths or injuries among workers or the surrounding community. The problem unit was deactivated and the other came back on-line in 1985. In 2004 it generated 7,273,245 MWh (one MWh equals 1,000 kilowatt hours or 1 million watt hours) of electricity.

Since that incident, there have been improvements in safety. France, which derives 75 percent of its power from 58 nuclear reactors in a country roughly the size of Texas, has enough surplus power to sell to nearby countries. France also has the technology to recycle spent fuel rods rather than risk storing them underground for many years.

And at MIT, Prof. Andrew Kadak is developing a safer replacement for fuel rods, a system called a "Pebble Bed" reactor. The uranium is contained in hundreds of thousands of graphite balls instead of rods. "This type of reactor is very unique in the sense that there's no way to melt this down," a meltdown being the cause of the Three Mile Island accident. He said these reactors are exactly what people want to see, "and that is, no meltdowns."

Sell, the deputy energy secretary, said "no serious person" can escape the conclusion that nuclear power will play the biggest role in the reduction of greenhouse gases, not solar, not wind, if the country expects to keep up with demand without further polluting the atmosphere.

The U.S. Energy Information Agency predicts demand for electricity will grow by 42 percent by 2030, and, said the Associated Press report, commercial utility companies see nuclear plants as the affordable way to meet that demand, until such time as science figures out how to commercially harness hydrogen reportedly a long way off.

NRG told the Associated Press its two units will power more than 2.1 million homes by about 2015 -- less than eight years away. (However, federal authorities predict getting through permitting and construction would take more like 15 years.)

The emerging U.S. interest in nuclear plants -- an atomic renaissance of sorts -- is stirring interest in France's interim generation reactors that are said to be safer, simpler and more efficient than those built in the U.S. during the '60s and '70s.

Politically, the Three Mile Island incident is fading from memory, and while some in the country may fear nuclear plants' vulnerability to acts of terrorism, it will be the utilities' charge to teach them otherwise.